EnCounters 3: Countermined
by MizJoely
Summary: Third in the series after Counterintuitive and Counterintelligence. An ex enters Molly's life, a dead man is contacted and things get a whoooole lot more complicated in the "Counter" universe.


**Countermined**

_Countermine: To frustrate or defeat by secret and opposite measures_

_A/N: Here's where we officially enter AU land, since I'm going to be playing fast and loose with the timeline established in the show. Please don't scold; I promise, it'll be worth it. Also, the tone gets much more angsty in this installment and ends on a cliffhanger. You've been warned._

_Oh, and I own nothing but the plot and the dialogue. BBC and Moftiss own the characters and setting, and don't I thank them every day for sharing such a glorious universe with the rest of us mere mortals!_

Molly pressed a hand to the small of her back, grimacing as she levered herself back up to a standing position. She'd dropped the stupid penlight – again – and of course she'd done it when there was no one else in the morgue to help her now that simply bending down and retrieving it herself was out of the question.

She quite missed being able to bend down from the waist and pick things up once she dropped them. And she dropped so many things now as her joints and ligaments loosened, interfering with her ability to grip. It was bad enough having such an enormous belly getting in her way now that she was nearly eight and a half months pregnant, but the not being able to use her fine motor skills thing was almost as bad. Not to mention the "scatterbrain effect," as her OB called it, her inability to remember things from one minute to the next.

If she wasn't careful, one day someone would say something to her and she would forget that she was keeping an enormous, dangerous secret close to her heart and blurt something out – to John, or to Greg Lestrade or Mike Stamford – about Sherlock not being dead.

Oh, wouldn't _that_ be a lovely way to repay him for not running screaming from her when he discovered that he'd gotten her pregnant after her birth control implant had dislodged itself.

At least she could be proud of how well she'd acquitted herself when his brother Mycroft had made his appearance at her doorstep, exactly as Sherlock had predicted he would – frightfully polite, but nonetheless insistent on having her subjected to a paternity test.

She hadn't told anyone who the baby's father was, hadn't even spoken to John Watson at that point, but Sherlock's warning had stood her in good stead. She'd agreed to the test, argued weakly that she didn't _want_ Sherlock's money – which she didn't – then capitulated when Mycroft pointed out the advantages her child would enjoy if she did accept the money.

After, of course, the child was proven to be a Holmes. Oh, not that he'd ever implied that Molly was lying…but still. His insistence that "the family lawyers" were behind his visit was as transparent a ploy as any Molly had tried in the past, when she was so desperate for Sherlock's attention that she didn't realize that all she had to do was just…be herself.

"Uncle Mycroft is going to be a huge pain in the arse," she grumbled, glancing down at her stomach as if the baby could understand her.

As if in response to her grumpy words, the baby – a boy, she'd found that much out and made sure to tell Mycroft when he arrived to confirm the results of the paternity test and welcome her child to the family – kicked her. Hard. "Oof, I'm sorry, Hamish, didn't know my bad mood would translate to you practicing your football moves!" she said with wry affection.

Of course his name wasn't really "Hamish;" that was just her nickname for her unborn son, a bit of a tweak to his absent father, who'd once mentioned how much he loathed his own name and would never inflict anything more outré than "Henry" or "David" on any child of his.

Her grin faded as she thought about her child's father. She missed him quite desperately, especially as her due date grew nearer and nearer.

As his self-appointed (but vitally important, she could never forget that even when she missed him so much it _hurt_) mission stretched out longer and longer.

She sighed again, rubbing her hand absently across her stomach, the penlight once again falling to the floor, unnoticed as her thoughts turned inward.

Back to the last day she'd seen Sherlock before he disappeared once again into the fetid criminal labyrinth Jim Moriarty had left behind…

**Four Months Ago**

"Oh, God, yes, that's…yes, right there, I…aaahhh!"

Molly grinned to herself as she leaned back on her heels, daintily wiping her chin with the back of one hand as she flipped her hair over her shoulder. It was nice to be the one driving Sherlock into incoherent gabbling by the pressure of her mouth on his cock for once, rather than the other way around…not that she had a cock, but it was the mouth-to-privates formula she meant, and dear lord, what difference did it make? She knew what she meant and Sherlock was in no position (she thought with a great deal of self-satisfied smugness) to deduce her thoughts at the moment.

When she'd told him she wanted to make absolutely certain he remembered their last morning together before "Derek Jacobs" had to make his reappearance, he'd offered one of his trademark smirk-and-raised-eyebrow combinations that challenged her to do exactly that as loudly as if he'd actually spoken the words.

Funny how she'd never been one to either issue or answer to dares in her life…until now.

Being pregnant must have kick-started her courage. Or knowing that she not only mattered to the man she loved, but that he cared for her as well (as best he could, as best he knew how, which was all she ever wanted from him). Icing on the cake? The sure knowledge that he cared for their unborn baby. That he cared enough to be concerned about the possibility that she might terminate the pregnancy (never, impossible; she already loved the child and she'd only known about it for three days).

Sherlock chose that exact moment to interrupt her thoughts by hauling her up onto his lap. He was seated on her worn green davenport, legs spread as she knelt between them, head thrown back and arms outstretched, or had been before pulling her up to rest securely on his lap.

He peered at her with mock outrage on his face as he said: "That, Miss Molly Kathleen Elizabeth Hooper, was definitely _not_ something the nuns taught you in Catholic school."

She giggled like the prim little schoolgirl she'd once been (and he was right, the nuns definitely didn't teach her anything about oral sex, it was her best friend Susie O'Malley who'd demonstrated the proper technique on first a carrot and then a cucumber), then leaned forward and kissed the tip of his nose. "Is that a complaint, Mr. Holmes?" she asked, reveling in the fact that he was teasing her, and that she was (completely without stuttering) teasing him back.

"Not. In. The. Least." His reply was punctuated by swift kisses following each word, and she giggled again as she returned those kisses. For one more day he was hers, he was Sherlock Holmes and not "Derek Jacobs," the identity he'd taken on in order to begin his infiltration of Moriarty's criminal empire.

He hadn't told her more than that, and she knew better than to ask. He'd assured her he wasn't endangering her by being in her flat while "Derek Jacobs" hid out (again, she didn't ask why and he didn't tell her).

He'd been pleased by her pregnancy – well, perhaps "pleased" was too strong a word. Neither of them could be truly said to be pleased by an unplanned pregnancy while Sherlock was "dead." But he hadn't chastised her, hadn't condemned her or pushed her away, had instead asked her to allow him to be a part of their child's life once he was able to return. And she'd practically melted in his arms; if he'd asked her to fly with him to the moon in that instant, she would have unhesitatingly agreed.

For one more day, he would still be hers, and she was determined to make the most of that one day.

**oOo**

Oh, she'd certainly done that much, she remembered with a fond smile and faint blush. They'd made love three times that day; once in the early afternoon, once after dinner and once more at midnight, before he'd been forced to leave and once again take up his dangerous game of cat-and-mouse. She'd kissed him, hard, desperately, and he'd returned the kiss with equal fervor, pausing only to bend down and press a much gentler kiss to her abdomen, whispering something to their unborn child – a promise, a declaration of how much he cared? She couldn't hear and didn't want to eavesdrop on such a private moment.

She giggled helplessly at the way her mind worked. "Honestly, Molly, how can you be so silly?" she chided herself as she turned her attention back to the body she was supposed to be examining. The full post-mortem had been performed by Dr. Singh, but she'd promised her supervisor that she'd take a second look at Mr. Mortimer Johnson's fingertips, per Scotland Yard request, and she'd best get it over with so she could finish up the day's paperwork and get home.

Home, of course, being 221B Baker Street and not the cramped flat she'd been living in when she last saw Sherlock. John had insisted on moving her there once she broke the news of her pregnancy to him – and revealed that, yes, Sherlock was the father.

That conversation had been exhilarating and heartbreaking all at once. She hated lying to John about Sherlock, hated keeping such an important secret, but being able to give him a glimmer of hope had been marvelous…

"_John, I just needed to tell you…I'm pregnant," she said, rushing out the words before she lost her courage._

_His weary expression lightened into something approaching happiness as her words sunk in. "Oh, Molly, that's wonderful…it is wonderful, right?" he asked as sudden doubt descended._

_She offered up a tremulous smile. "It is," she agreed, reaching out to take both his hands in hers. Her grin faded as she steeled herself for the next bit. Still the truth, but the part that he would either be elated to hear, or would plunge him back into the mire of despair he'd been inhabiting since being forced to watch his closest friend jump off the roof of St. Bart's._

_They were in the flat he and Sherlock had shared for two years (he still couldn't bring himself to visit St. Bart's, even four months after Sherlock's "death" and she couldn't blame him), the one he was currently struggling to keep on his own, even with Mrs. Hudson drastically reducing the rents. If only he'd accept the money Mycroft kept pressing on him, but he was proud and Molly hoped he was as strong as Sherlock insisted when he told her to share her news with the doctor before telling anyone else._

"_John, I don't want you to be angry, but…the baby's father. It's…Sherlock." She lowered her eyes, then immediately raised them, nervously seeking his reaction._

_Stunned, that was the only word for it. She felt his hands, which had been grasping hers tightly, slacken their grip as his mouth fell open and his eyes widened. She waited patiently for him to say something, anything, and nearly collapsed with relief as his eyes filled with tears of the "happy" variety and he pulled her to him for a wordless embrace._

_When words finally did come to him, they weren't "when" or "how" or even "was it a petri dish kind of thing," which was the one she half-expected from him. Instead it was "congratulations" and "please tell me you'll move in here" and "I know I'm not Sherlock but I want to be there for you, to do what I can for you and the baby."_

She'd nearly lost it herself then, grateful beyond words that he'd reacted so positively to her news. They'd cried on each other's shoulders, then gone downstairs to break the news to Mrs. Hudson. She'd cried as well, which started the two of them up again, and there they were, the three of them, bawling like babies.

Mrs. Hudson had been the one to take her aside and ask the question John still seemed too dazed and happy to wonder about. "Molly, dear, please don't mind me asking this but, when…"

"The night he jumped," she replied, wishing she was telling the truth but knowing that _eight days after he faked his death_ would cause a great deal of trouble for them all. "He came to me, at the end of my shift, and told me…he told me he thought he was going to d-die."

That much had been true, and her pain and trembling lips hadn't been acting; remembering that night still hurt, and worrying about his well-being was a more than adequate substitute for the grief she was supposedly feeling over his "death."

Mrs. Hudson had simply nodded and hugged her, a good woman who accepted Molly's fictionalized story at face value and insisted that yes, of course she and her cat could move in – she wouldn't take no for an answer, it would do John a world of good to have some company, and if he was allergic there were a great many over-the-counter treatments and if it came down to it, she, Mrs. Hudson, would take Toby in…

John wasn't allergic, and after a wary period of hiding under beds and glowering at Molly for upending his comfortable life, Toby had finally decided the new flat was adequate to his needs and even allowed John to pet him whenever the two of them were settled on the sofa together.

That had taken less than a month; Molly still felt as if she were intruding after four months, and envied her cat his adaptability. Her discomfort mostly stemmed from her having to continually lie to John, even if only tacitly, by perpetuating the myth that Sherlock was dead and she was having this baby on her own, with no partner in the future making his way back to her.

She and Toby had been residing at Baker Street for nearly four months now, and she was eight months pregnant and had last heard from Sherlock two weeks ago, a simple text that read: _Found Moriarty's right-hand man, bully boy name of Sebastian Moran. Once I have him, I'll be home._

She'd been pleased and relieved and terrified at the same time; Moriarty's right-hand man didn't sound like someone easy to bring in – or bring down, whichever outcome Sherlock ended up being forced into.

She was allowing herself to get too caught up in her memories, both pleasant and unpleasant; time to get back to Mr. Johnson's fingertips. She leaned down and flicked on the penlight.

"Hullo, Molly."

The penlight once again fell to the floor as that familiar, hated (_he's dead, why isn't he dead, maybe my ears are playing tricks on me_) voice came floating over her shoulder.

She turned, hoping, praying, that she was dreaming, that this wasn't real, that she'd misheard that voice…

No. It was him. Jim Moriarty, alive and in the flesh, leaning casually against the wall by the door, arms crossed, grinning widely at her. As if they were old friends reunited.

She opened her mouth to scream, and he leapt, literally _leapt_ over to her, clasping a hand over her mouth and shushing her like a concerned mama trying to quiet a toddler's temper tantrum. "Now, Molly, none of that, luv," he crooned in her ear.

She tried to shove him away, only stopping her frantic movements when she felt something hard poking against her abdomen. She flicked her eyes downward, feeling the terror mount as she saw that, yes, he'd pressed the barrel of a gun against her abdomen. Right against the baby's head, since she could feel her son's feet pressing against the other side.

When it was clear that he'd gotten her complete and utter attention – and surrender – he slipped his hand from her mouth, lowering it to rest comfortably on her shoulder. "That's better, Molly, dear. Now let's get your purse and coat and take a nice ride, shall we?"

**oOo**

He brought her to a nondescript rental flat, the kind the owners let furnished; plain white walls with a few painted landscapes for decoration, beige carpet, beige furniture, a few carefully placed (cheap and unbreakable) knickknacks on the bookshelf, interspersed with leather-bound complete editions of Shakespeare and Dickens and, incongruously in the age of Google, what looked like two full shelves' worth of the Encylopaedia Britannica.

Sherlock would be proud of her observational skills, at least she hoped he would be. Who knew? He might have already deduced a hundred other, more pertinent facts about the flat, might even know exactly where they were based on the amount of time it took them to get there and the type of asphalt they'd driven over. Even if he'd been blindfolded, as Molly had been, he'd know.

She desperately wished he would pop up from behind the davenport, gun in hand, and blow Moriarty and his accomplice away, take her into his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right.

Because she was pretty sure it wasn't.

After the hulking blonde accomplice _("Seb," Moriarty called him "Seb", short for Sebastian, maybe? He sounded Scottish, a bit, but not much, hard to tell since he'd hardly spoken a word in her presence_) had exited the sitting room, Moriarty turned his full, maniacal attention on her.

"Did you miss me?"

When she didn't reply, he bounded over to her side and grabbed her by the arms, shaking her until her teeth chattered in her head. She stared at him, wide-eyed, as he repeated the question, louder this time. "I said, DID YOU MISS ME?!"

She shook her head, then finally found her voice as she wrenched herself free of his grasp. "No."

She considered screaming, but from the way he raised his own voice she doubted anyone would be close enough to hear her cries for help. The window, she belatedly noticed as she cast her eyes around the room, weren't just curtained off; she could clearly see that they'd been boarded up as well…and that the door boasted a complicated looking set of electronic locks.

She'd been brought to a prison.

While she frantically searched for a way out of this trap, Moriarty was speaking again, pacing, circling around her as she forced herself to stand perfectly still. "Well, go ahead and say it, you know you're…" he paused as if searching for the right word, then breathed it directly into her left ear: "…_dying_ to."

She kept her lips pressed tightly shut, slowly, deliberately shaking her head. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of saying the words that were screaming inside her mind. _Why aren't you dead?!_

If he was disappointed in her silence, he kept it to himself. "It's been so long, Molly, I've certainly missed you," he said instead as he returned to circling her. "We had such good times together, didn't we, luv?"

She shivered as he moved out of her sight, feeling his eyes burning into the back of her head, wanting to follow him, to keep her eyes on him, but unable to move, a rabbit under a hawk's eyes, frozen in place, hands clutching the swollen mound of her belly as if they could offer some sort of protection against such an implacable foe.

Sebastian Moran had been a feint, a dodge, she saw that now; a distraction to keep Sherlock on the wrong track…until it was too late. Until Jim Moriarty had them both right where he wanted them.

Under his thumb.

"What do you want with me?" she asked in a broken whisper, hands still moving, rubbing gently against the frail barrier between her child and the cruelty of the outside world. "Please…"

He'd finally stopped moving, the shark coming in for the kill, stopping directly in front of her. Lifting her trembling chin up until she was forced to meet his mocking gaze. "Why, Molly my dear, dear, girl," he purred. "You've already given me what I want." His gaze dropped down with deliberate slowness as his fingers reached out to graze her stomach with something approaching reverence. "Sherlock's child, his son, to raise as my own."

Then he leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. She jerked her head away in revulsion, and his hands moved with lightning swiftness to grab her forearms, fingers digging in cruelly until she cried out in pain. "Don't worry, Molly girl," he said, his voice soft and dangerous, the way she'd never heard it before, certainly not when he'd been "Jim from IT" and had spoken in a teasing Irish lilt. "You're in no danger from me just yet." Then he laughed, a high-pitched giggle that sent a shudder of fear over her body, releasing her arms and backing away from her. "I still need you alive right now. After all," he added, voice lowering and eyes burning into hers, "you're carrying precious cargo. Cargo I went to a great deal of trouble to bring into existence."

The world stopped, that was how it felt. It just…stopped. Her breath, her heart, her hearing, eyesight, all stopped at those horrifying, impossible words. "Wh – what do you…" she asked when the world started again, when her lungs once more expanded and filled with air, her heart suddenly thundering in her chest, spots dancing before her eyes…

She was no longer standing, had somehow (_Jim must have moved her_) been transported to the davenport during that blank period (_when the world stopped_).

He squatted before her, resting his fingertips on her knees, and she wanted nothing more than to shove his hands away, rid herself of his hateful presence, but she had to know, had to understand…

He was speaking, and she forced herself to listen, to ignore the pounding of her heart and her sharp gasps for breaths as he spoke.

"Why, Molly," he said, softly, his voice a mocking caress, "don't you know? Don't you _get_ it?" He laughed again, a quiet laugh, not the lunatic high-pitched giggle from before. His fingers squeezed her knees, then patted them as he peered into her (_dazed, confused, terrified_) eyes. "I never expected him to actually kill himself. Never meant for him to do so. I always knew he'd find a way out of it. _And I let him_," he added in triumph, eyes glinting, dancing with barely-restrained mirth. "I let him, because I wanted him to be alive, to find out about what I'd done to you."

She shook her head, ears buzzing, grayness rushing into the edges of her vision, but refused to allow them to overcome her again. He couldn't possibly, he wasn't saying…what was he saying? "No," she gasped, shoving him away, pushing him so that he lost his balance and landed on his backside on the floor. She had no strength to do more than that, to do anything but stare wildly at him, feeling the heat drain from her face as she considered the unbearable. "You're not saying, you didn't, this isn't…"

He hadn't moved from his position on the floor to do more than lean his hands back and cock his head to the side. At her confused jumble of almost-questions and almost-protests, he put his head back and laughed, long and hard, finally collapsing to the floor completely, holding his stomach like a child who'd been told the funniest joke ever. "Oh, Molly!" he gasped out when he got control of himself again and sat back up. "No, no, nothing like that!" he said after another minute, raising his hand and waving it at her dismissively. "No, I didn't rape you or inseminate you!" He paused thoughtfully. "Although I admit the idea did cross my mind."

With the abruptness of a switch shutting off, his merriment vanished, leaving him once again glaring at her dead-eyed and expressionless. "I simply set up an experiment. Fed you fertility drugs. Made sure your birth control implant went bye-bye one night – yes, I suppose I did violate you in that sense," he added pensively (_had he always been this mercurial, this mad, how had he kept up the "Jim from IT" persona without any of this insanity leaking through?)._ "I snuck into your flat one night after you'd had a few drinks with the girls, slipped you a little something to make sure you kept sleeping, then – snap!" He mimed snapping on a latex glove, the pantomime unmistakable even if one didn't have a medical background. "I found your strings, gave a tug aaaaand," another theatrical flourish, this time as he fished something out of his jacket pocket and held it up in front of her face, "ta-da! Here's the proof. Has your DNA aaallll over it."

He flipped the clear plastic container at her, and Molly's hands caught it automatically, her eyes drawn with a sense of dread to its contents.

A small, plastic, y-shaped device sat on the bottom of the sealed container.

A birth control implant.

Just like the one she'd…

No. No, oh no, he hadn't, he couldn't mean…but yes, there was the evidence. He'd deliberately set things up so that if she and Sherlock had sex, she would be more likely to become pregnant.

As she had.

**oOo**

Sherlock frowned at the vibrating mobile. The message was from a number he didn't recognize, and the only person he'd given his number to for this particular burner phone was currently dead. Not at Sherlock's hands, although it had been close; no, that particular nasty bit of business had been handled by the (for once) capable officers of the local Met office. He'd simply (and anonymously) led them in the correct direction…and they'd been forced to fire on the target when he refused to surrender.

Which led him directly back to his current dilemma; who was attempting to contact him on an anonymous burner phone when the (supposed) only other owner of the number was deceased?

He let it ring through to voice mail, caution having kept him alive this long.

As an additional precaution (against what, he couldn't say, but the fact that someone unknown had this mobile's number was troubling on a number of levels), he changed locations three times before listening to the message.

As he did so, all color drained from his face.

"Surprise! Miss me? I've missed you, you naughty boy! Making soooo much trouble for poor Seb…but that's OK, I was bored with it all anyway!"

The voice was bright, sprightly, even.

Easily recognizable.

Sherlock knew how he had accomplished his own resurrection, faked his own death, but he'd literally watched while Jim Moriarty blew the top of his head off on the roof of St. Bart's eight months prior.

So how…

Irrelevant. The recording was still rambling on, but it was a single word that captured Sherlock's attention.

Molly. He'd said "Molly."

He replayed the message, eyes narrowed as he focused on the words being spoken and not on the voice speaking them. "So, anywhooo, I just thought I'd let you know, I've got company for a while. Our darling Molly, so much more of her to love these days, isn't there? Ta!"

The message ended. Before Sherlock could replay it for a third time, the mobile beeped to indicate an incoming text.

With icy fingers, he pressed the "Read" button.

It was a photo. Molly Hooper, enormously pregnant, tied to a chair in the middle of a nondescript furnished rental somewhere in London.

Another beep another text, this one consisting of two simple words.

"Find her."

He was on his other mobile within seconds, dialing furiously, forwarding the photo first to that phone then to his brother's mobile number.

It was time for Sherlock Holmes to return to the land of the living.


End file.
